At Community Platform for Empowerment and Development (COPED), we aim to empower 360 disenfranchised women of Migori County, Kenya, mentoring them to envision and create new possibilities for their lives. This is completed through an empowerment program called Imagine, developed in partnership with the Empowerment Institute of NY, USA, in which targeted women make choices and take charge of their own well-being by realizing their full potential while building their assets with Table Banking.
Migori county habitants often live in dire poverty; most women never went school. Prioritizing boys' education, early girl marriage (which generates income to funds for boys' education), and domestic chore obligations for girls, among others, has disenfranchised these women from a young age. Poverty and emotional despair often limits women from seeing any potential and therefore providing other options to their daughters. Women and girls are thereby engulfed in a vicious spiraling cycle.
COPED specifically targets these women in an effort to shift their perspectives. The 4-day Empowerment Workshop wakes the women up and shows them that it is possible to change their fate. These women begin to realize they are capable and have power to affect their lives positively. Table banking facilitates small loans to invest in business ventures and receive increased revenue. COPED develops personal agency, an intrinsic motivation to act, in targeted women and sustained behavior change.
The potential long-term impact of this project not only empowers 360 women, a ripple effect, results in an additional 9,000 persons experiencing greater confidence, expanded mindsets, better decision-making, advocating and overall improved use of existing opportunities. The women become more apt to participate in business ventures, empowering the community as a whole, improving livelihoods and increasing girls access to education. The ripple effect aims to sustainably increase women's role.
